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Missouri-based custom software consultancy and Apple mobility partner Asynchrony Labs has expanded operations to London, with its eye firmly set on the UK public sector.

Asynchrony Labs is the software development arm of $9 billion technology consultancy World Wide Technology (WWT), and it has opened its European headquarters in London’s Canary Wharf following solid year-on-year growth.

Asynchrony specialises in agile software development for large enterprise customers. Generally the firm engages with customers through its "business innovation consulting" unit, which goes onsite to understand the business pain points that custom software could solve, quickly build road maps and start a four to six week prototyping process.

Speaking to Computerworld UK, Kelly White, the UK GM at Asynchrony Labs explained that Canary Wharf was the best location because it is near its parent company WWT, as well as core existing customers in the financial services sector.

Now it has a base in London, White said the aim is to leverage its success in the USA, specifically having worked with the department of defence and the healthcare sector there, to break into the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and National Health Service (NHS) here in the UK.

Apple mobility partner

Asynchrony also partners with Apple as part of the iPhone maker's nascent mobility partner programme. As part of this programme Asynchrony Labs helps enterprise customers integrate Apple technology into their IT environment.

An increasing enterprise appetite for Apple mobile devices and apps is reflected in data from Strategy Analytics MWS, which reported in Q3 2016 that Apple’s iPhone accounted for 26 percent of the total business smartphone shipments and the iPad accounted for 31 percent of the total business tablet shipments.

Being part of the partner programme gives Asynchrony early access to alpha and beta Apple products and allows them to prototype early enterprise use cases. For example, Asynchrony worked with pizza retailer Papa John's to launch one of the first retail integrations for Apple TV, allowing viewers to order pizza easily through the app.

Another recent project saw Asynchrony prototype an iOS app to help hospitals in the USA provide physicians with access to patient's electronic health records and even real-time metrics from a wearable device, straight to their iPad or iPhone.

By working with networking partners like Cisco or Dell EMC the firm can quickly prototype internet of things (IoT) solutions.

This makes healthcare a key growth vertical for the firm. However, White was coy on any potential deals with the NHS. "This is a brand new effort for us and we are starting to have conversations to show this capability in IoT across defence and healthcare.

"So whether it is the NHS, or premium healthcare providers, or even the hardware makers themselves, giving them the platform or software layer means there are lots of opportunities to be impactful in those spaces," he said.